Showing Posts For Brokenbone.8759:
The experience so far has been very negative, in my opinion.
While I haven’t deployed any myself, I am fine with the “we will treat them as a joke because they are a joke” approach, lining up cannons behind gates (because sure, why not fire right through them), putting 20 on a wall, going “lul good CvC” when it’s squad vs. squad of cannons and the like. Go see a humour screenie on Reddit where the little rowboat in Bay has multiple cannons stacked on it, again, sure, it’s funny… but it detracts from the game mode, which could stand more positive than negative press at this stage.
I don’t mind the change one way or the other, hypothetically if it deters “non-participants” from taking up queue space (i.e., press B, it’s the poor man’s Royal Terrace / Airship pass), cool.
Even in T1 though, where queues are often a thing, I don’t often see hordes of people at the crafting stations… maybe three hovering around there to dip into their bank or quickly bang out something time gated, then either on you go back to PvE land or back into the fight. I suppose I do see people hanging out around spawn even if not to craft, maybe it’s a guild group forming up and waiting to roll out as people arrive late or the tag takes a bio. Maybe there’s also PvE “gift of battle protesters” who max participation and hang at spawn til they notice decay, then go bother a yak or something easy. I suppose there’d be data on who’s at spawn for how long, if queueing across too many maps is really a problem, other than at times like say, reset.
If non-participation is such a problem, I guess devs could tinker with participation decay more, maybe if the “Determined” buff is on you, it decays faster. People would still play around that though and AFK in some T3 lord’s room and hope it’s safe-ish, so maybe there’s no point in throwing resources at what doesn’t seem to noticeably be a problem.
The cynical side of me is wondering out loud if Royal and/or Airship passes are about to go on sale, again, if pressing B for free and selecting home BL is no longer an option to go craft some junk. Oh well, neither here nor there on the change, I’ll port to LA or wherever when needing more food, oil, stones, whatever.
Polls are great for CYA but I’m not sure if there’s a “vision” in terms of design unless each poll choice is a potential vision but it all circles back to “if in doubt, CYA.”
The amount of communication and what feels like a ton of time and dev investment here compared to perceived drought prior though, all welcome.
Convenient but expensive.
How many rankup chests is 75 proofs, call it ten (if we averaged 7.5 proofs per open)? Say I need six runes of durability, that’s sixty rankup chests. Is that a week of steady play, I can’t say?
Grinding AB for map currency, way faster for me personally, I’d estimate the ability to gain 900 lumps of aurilium (150 per rune) is achievable in the 2-3 meta cycle ballpark, maybe less if I join multi-map / switch to alts type chest trains afterward under the city.
This convenience / speed type consideration won’t be true for everyone, I already ground out the stuff I needed most and the masteries to even talk to those merchants. Not everyone will have. This WvW change may be the right solution for them.
The exception is that anything that required a Dragon Stand crystalline ore type merchant is really welcome. All the other maps, the currency comes fast and furious. Crystalline Ore is a little different in terms of how it gets picked up, you either use reward Machetes or blow a lot of map currency off all the other maps to get more such Machetes, and the largest amount of Noxious Pods to harvest isn’t going to be until the end of a 1-2 hour meta cycle. Buying stuff in DS is basically much more of a pain than anywhere else, so I’ll probably use some proofs for things I don’t have from there yet. Again, others may have mountains of Crystalline Ore or love doing DS every day, so their preferences will vary as well.
sigils and runes is quite a good news and much appreciated. But HoT recipes does not help the WvW players much. For example, in order to craft Pahua ascended armors you need a trailblazer ascended insigna. To make that you need fulgurite which requires 3 types of mats that drop only in 3 of the HoT maps. Bottle of Airship Oil, Pile of Auric Dust and Ley Line Spark (and ALOT of them). While you farm for those you get enough separate mats (example: Ley line crystals for pahua stats one) that will allow you to buy the recipe. In the end WvW players will still need to farm the hell out of those maps to craft.
Do a mystic forge stat swap for a fraction of the effort. I have changed Ahamid kit into Ruka kit (Wanderer’s) this way, it means sticking old gear, Anthology of Heroes, some ectos and a Wanderer’s insignia (exo) into the MF.
If you would have had to create an insignia anyhow on the journey to Ascended kit of the relevant HoT variety, I’d skip the fulgurite related steps and just chuck it into the MF along with an anthology, ecto, and a cheaper 3 stat piece of gear that you got from a chest or crafted previously.
<SNIP>And then there’s how this’ll work out for anyone who hasn’t maxed out their ability lines and doesn’t have points to spare…
If you have alt characters, remember they start with an unspent pool of exactly as many points as your well used characters happen to have earned. So even a fresh level 2 baby character may have hundreds of unspent points just like a main, they could presumably grab nothing but Provisioner ranks, do shopping, and if it tickled your fancy they could even be deleted after tucking the goods in the Bank.
I’ve got a level 49 bag opener who I’d not WvW with at all, tons of unspent points except to go get max supply (+25 at a Presence of the Keep location) before reset, worst case he’s a repair man from time to time when things are desperate. He could be my designated “pip 6 HoT shopper”, but I guess it’s wait and see if the prices are within reason or if I should just join the odd HoT meta map depending what recipes or runes were sought (feels like I already bought enough of the key recipes and runes at this stage but hey, whatever keeps people in WvW and not cursing PvE grinding).
Regarding any removal of DBL, why not let players “vote with their feet”, particularly if there’s some kind of mixed rotation? That’s when you’ll have data about where people play, what happens in terms of captures, kills, etc.
While this polling stuff is an interesting change of pace, it shouldn’t dictate everything you do, the community on the forums is a subset of the actual playerbase. Sure I can get reminder mail when I rank up that there’s yet another poll up, but am I really going to read 7 pages of posts about why a poll’s questions are misleading or should have looked a different way or pressure posts to make devs backpedal or reveal next steps etc.? C’mon.
Polling is ok to some moderate extent, but giving any impression it drives “everything” is a little extreme. Deleting stuff for example, very extreme. Strident “I’m not gonna play unless I get my way” posters are a little much, I’m still expecting to play crowded maps in T1 match ups either way, lots of people who stuck to the game developed expertise in the DBLs regardless, putting it to use in the future would be perfectly fine.
Obsidian Sanctum is never queued, and in absence of the Guild Mission about the jumping puzzle, there’s not really much reason to go there except duelling, is there?
In a queued map, players (even avid duellers) may better appreciate if other people get annoyed with taking up spaces to duel. Just as other people get annoyed seeing people hanging out at crafting stations since pressing “B” is cheaper than waypointing to a city out of PvE… Citadel is the poor man’s Royal Terrace.
“Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.”
(or less kindly: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.)
I play in T2 and routinely come across objectives with what, +20% MF (is that the weakest aura)? Much rather lay my own guilds’ claims with the +5 supply at aura 8. I suspect when I see this on really core objectives like Garrison that it’s probably a troll claim. In cases though, without confronting anyone about it, I’ve noticed that at least a couple weeks back, guilds I knew were here for the fights and zergbusting etc. laying claims but their auras were surprisingly crappy. The auras have gotten better since then, but in those cases I figured it was a claim for pride as opposed to anything else, they aren’t trolls, they maybe just hadn’t PvE’d hard enough / donation drive’d / resonanance/aetherium managed up to the stronger auras.
If it’s a guild I’ve never heard of with a claim though, then suspicion mounts. Remember that anyone can click anything unclaimed on the map and lay a claim, whether they participated in capture or not. Often things get “de-claimed” when a battle group is on the move, stripping supply out of a chain of objectives on say, a drive to a keep / garrison. It’s +5 the spawn camp, drain. Then +5 the spawn tower (thereby camp claim vanishes and it’s up for grabs), drain, and so on and so forth.
The “high claim trumps” idea floated above maybe has some merit, but that higher-claimant might be rapidly moving their claim anyhow, so then what, is the objective un-claimed after? Alternately, would it revert to the weaker claim?
I think there’s a lot of new players and returning players with all the WvW hype, these folks may not have invested in guildhall upgrades to get WvW auras, but I hope the majority are here having fun, not alts from other servers doing the troll thing. If they are new to WvW and they see the rectangle of “claim for [guildname]” let them push the button, and hope map chat isn’t necessarily full of snarky folks yelling about it. Give a little benefit of the doubt, although yes I am sure there are trolls too, I have no good idea on what you can actually do about that (how do you sort server loyalists from enemies to let, say, a majority / seniority group who hopefully aren’t trolls themselves apply a “Turncoat” debuff exactly? You don’t!)
True or false, Magic Find impacting WvW Reward Track containers?
We know MF helps out with PvP Reward Track containers, it’s one of the reasons that purple-looking Call of the Mists buff is so attractive during like, Twitch streaming events.
I suspect MF also helps with WvW Reward Track containers, just assuming a lot of this stuff is cut and pasted from sPvP. As such, the Mist War Summons +50% MF we’re getting as sort of a celebration happy time launch beta thing may mean the reward track boxes are dropping better stuff than usual, so some of our impressions about “so how’s rewards folks” could be rosier than what things will be like without event-type buffs.
I could be dead wrong about the WvW boxes off the tracks being unaffected by either your normal account MF, MF food/utils, or Mist War Summons event buff by the way… but again if I’m right, we might be getting a bit of a skewed impression at this stage.
I am pleased that World Linking is a beta. It means there is a possibility that a so far negative experience gets evaluated and not necessarily continued in the way initially envisioned.
I think there’s probably metrics Anet has that show people went nuts after the Tuesday patch to get in and play, the idea of stoking that even further artificially by lumping together populations sounds like it wasn’t considered in light of the feeding frenzy begun just a few days before.
I’m pleased we had a dev running with our group last night, he’d have seen our pre-comped squad all made into swiss cheese with people stuck in LA or wherever for an hour or more… oops drag all the “not here yets” into squad 10. He’d have seen that when our commander had a disconnect, welp we won’t be seeing her for a couple hours, fortunately a good guy in the squad took charge and tagged up so we had an ele as the tag, still meant a couple dozen people whether guild group or folks tagging along were sorta “ok now what” for twenty minutes, other tag on the map was I think a non-English language guild group so a little harder to just switch channels and coordinate with that group.
Again, maybe it’s the sentiment that there’s a lot of die hards who “kept the light on” for WvW, we’re in most cases hugely pleased to see action action action (though it’s interesting to see some people intentionally picked low pop worlds preferring small group operations), it’s a bummer if now our favourite hangout has such a long line in front of it that forget about it, I wasn’t going to PvE anyhow (and won’t do something time/group sensitive like Fractals in case q pops), I may as well go to bed or go do something non-gamey.
I’ll still be playing, watching with interest how this all develops, but was definitely left with some level of concern last night that this super-full / super-queue thing is going to be bad. Maybe the die hards won’t be scared off but the people who were planning to dip in a toe will be? Guess it’s wait and see.
The potion thing makes me think of the Guild Hall tavern drinks.
We have WXP +% drinks and PvP Reward +% drinks, I suppose there’s always room for a WvW Reward +% drink too. Lots of players don’t really need WXP anymore except for bragging rights / titles, all their “pips” are filled in the WvW abilities. Being able to ignore a WXP guild drink and slam a WvW Reward drink may be pretty welcome, if really “rewards focussed.”
I’ve been seeing 4 queued maps often in T2, but T2 is known to be hopping.
I would not be surprised if the many many moons of negative press about the DBLs was causing anyone curious about sniffing around WvW with the new changes to ignore the DBLs and go EBG. This includes people who maybe are returning to WvW, as well as people who have never visited once but heard it’s rewarding now. Glad I like the BLs (and am down with the opening up / improvements) because that’s the only place I can likely play without braving 40+ queues.
1. How do you feel overall about reward tracks?
Pretty good. For people who play mostly WvW, they’re a way to get stuff that you might otherwise have to grind out in PvE where you’d prefer not to be. GW2 for me is 100x more fun when playing as a group with voice comms and all the laughs that come of that, sure that’s possible in PvE too but it’s almost expected in WvW, that’s where a lot of us choose to spend our time. Now it might not be at so much of a “loss” in terms of loot.
2. What are your thoughts on the rate at which you gain participation?
I have too little info to quite even tell what will “budge the needle” on participation. Like a watched pot never boils if you are trying to get up to the max +550, it seems to take forever, but after it’s at +550, okay, it will be there awhile, just keep fighting. If there was data like “tower defense event gives 40% of a bar if succeed, 20% if fail”, “cap a keep = 50% of a bar”, i.e., a nice list in the wiki, okay, then I’ll know a little better. Right now it feels maybe a little slow if you’re really strapping in for a lot of play, your first two ticks may or may not be max. Note that if it feels slow now, even with a “Mist War Summons” buff to introduce the system, it’ll be slower once that goes away.
3. How do you feel about the rate you earn reward track points?
If by rate you mean time, well… I’d like them to lock in whether or not you’re in for a whole 15 minute tick. I gather in EoTM they award in smaller amounts once per 5 minutes, there any harm in giving 1/3 the award 3x as frequently in normal WvW? Back to overall “lock in” though, especially with initial instability post patch, oops, crashed with 1 minute to go, get back in and it’s now 14:50 left, you missed your reward sucks to be you. Post resets there’s also often several minutes of the timer saying —:-- where I am afraid I don’t have a clue if that means we’re ultimately playing more than 15 minutes without getting drip fed our rewards. Granted this is all beta and that’s why feedback is being solicited, but if I’ve been flipping camps, towers, keeps, PKing etc., but I am NOT around as the clock strikes zero, it’s a bit of a bummer.
4. Overall, what are your impressions about the types of reward tracks we have?
I’ve barely looked at them, I just picked the Triumphant one for WvW exclusive skin, even if it’s not the best set I’ve ever seen. I assume someone can math out the total value of each and every track and say “the market dictates you pick track X to max out rewards.” These will keep me out of PvE but I wasn’t really there anyhow.
5. Are there any other reward tracks you would really like to see?
I figure ascended gear would put a track so head and shoulders far above the rest that it ain’t gonna happen. As I haven’t mathed out any of the tracks’ value, I do not know if ascended mats would be a reasonable end point for any track, like here’s a bunch of intermediate metals and things along the track, finally working up to a Deldrimor Ingot really insert the endpoint mat of your choice and lesser versions to fit the theme all the way up to the endpoint. Loot is being jetwashed into my bags from all the fighting lately anyhow, being given mats that I can deposit to bank would be as simple or better than the series of boxes often containing bags that I’m seeing right now. I suppose further to this point, since you have certain tracks “locked”, I suppose there could always be a series of 2-3 tracks that you’d have to do in sequence in order to get some kind of particularly awesome reward like ascended gear, if needing to balance off value (get a drip of low-mid mats in first track, mid-high in 2nd track, then 3rd track is some high mats and a weapon/armor).
Anyhow all this reward stuff is a welcome step in the right direction.
One comment outside the five questions, maps are feeling mighty crowded with people sampling the changes which is awesome, but since EoTM presumably has the most capacity for players, maybe considering EoTM having “equality” with regular WvW either for awhile or for good is worth exploring. As I understand it now, regular WvW is +550 per 15 mins, EOTM is +414 per 15 mins but really awarded as 138 per 5 mins. Not an EoTM player (except as I was dipping a toe in and being told if I liked mass PvP to go do real WvW), but I see no reason to give two unequal options and then not expect people are going to crowd to the more enriching one. That’s the one with map queues unfortunately, particularly in T2 right now. Some queue relief might be seen if people are shown EoTM is exactly as rewarding, or possibly even better if on a 5 minute tick system at 1/3 of the +550.
This does not seem to merit an official bug post, more of a “was it an oversight or is this design?”
Sharing participation with squaddies. Seems to work on map. Doesn’t seem to work across maps. The main foreseeable use for this new system seemed to be throwing a bone to scouts and sentries who may not see as much “action” as the rest of the squad, and often commanders are going to be asking for volunteers to keep an eye on some objective off-map, just like they always have. Maybe this was changed overnight though, can’t say, just something we noticed as soon as we started experimenting with new systems in the hours post-patch.
Everything is gold based. Badges are gold. Food is gold. Badges also buy you things u can’t with gold…..so they are worth hanging onto in some quantity. Quite a few useful food types you can get for 2c a piece on the Tp. I don’t know how many badges each food in the vendor costs but I would imagine the number of badges don’t equate to 2copper. I don’t know cause I don’t have Hot. Obviously they added this to let people who did buy Hot that were feeling jilted that their faith and investment was appreciated and they are gonna be pampered and treated special…..without recieving anyhting of real value other than to experience the content that already had access to but barring others from doing so.
Agreed. A Badge of Honor is worth “around” a silver at the moment (I think this will go down if BoH are coming out of a fire hose with hyped player influx, but maybe not if they’re blowing BoH fast as well). If you want to spend 5 silver (i.e., every consumable in this mini-shop is worth 5 BoH) on level 70 consumables, fill your boots.
I have this item and am likely to use it for “emergency” situations of running out of kit, or for alts who don’t have tidy rows of siege and food filling a bag worth of inventory.
I also completely get why it’s not a junk-buying merchant either, why sell for a gold something that has at least the junk-liquidating capability of an 800g permanent contract (i.e., something that comes out of BL Chests once in a blue moon)? Bottom would fall out of that permanent contract price I figure.
I’m in TC and yes, there’s a lot of politics re 2v1 right now but it’s creating huge fun battles. Sometimes you notice or hear crappy stuff. Sometimes you’ll see a DB and FA group bombing the hell out of each other. Whatever, it’s super active like at any time you could have reset-level volumes of players running around from all sides, seldom hard to find a tag, it’s a lot of laughs so enjoy it while it lasts.
Also I bet Anet is enjoying all the transfer $$$, split the revenues 50/50 between WvW rebalance and rounds of beer for the Anet folks who are running around on probably just more than TC’s side. Maybe the 2v1 vibe makes the Anet folks more willing to run with the “1”, beats me, I just know there’s a lot of action and good times.
In absence of a tactivator system, any objective has three variants based on tier, and the variables are really just how much the non-player elements (walls/gates, guards) might slow down a capture, or if defender players are around, a little more siege (cannons/mortars/oil) might be available to them.
I do like that tactivators introduce some variation into the objectives that we’ve probably all captured dozens if not hundreds of times. The floor plans sure aren’t changing, nor are the wood/stone/metal gates and walls. An objective becomes a little more scary if you know there’s Iron Guards to slow down your force long enough for the defender zerg to maybe race in to reply, or if you’re baited in to an ambush, Chilling Fog might punish the fact you committed.
As it stands with thin populations, I’d suggest it’s very easy to take objectives whether with a duo, havoc or a full zerg, well more than half the time there won’t be a sentry in a given objective (even in T2), there may be hardly anyone on the map, period. If one or two defenders do manage to respond, great, they may have a tactic to activate to deter invaders, they will also have some objective aura to boost their vitality, power and whatever else to help them punch above their weight so it’s not just a glorified PvD looking capture.
The tactics sound like they’re getting some rebalancing, much like the ingredient costs for scribing to even make the schematic stuff that goes into a tactivator slot. It’s especially the extending of cooldown which I figure will encourage or put more value on “baiting” a tactic being activated, which we already do (feint SMC to get a panicked airship pull, maybe we’ll be coming back in 3ish minutes when we know it’s on cooldown… or taking your garri in a BL because we know you’re all in SMC waiting for us to come back). Not that Airship will ever be a thing in Alpine, it’s SMC only, but we all understand baiting a bomb, the non-passive tactics are the same deal.
I actually like the Desert Borderlands, playing in T2. Outright scrapping seems a poor idea. Putting them into a rotation of some sort seems the better plan, since it seems there’s a lot of nostalgia for Alpine.
Actually since I started playing WvW I was always challenged by why all three BLs for Green Blue Red were all mirror images of each other, why not three maps of Blue gets Alpine, Red gets desert and Green gets what… well, something forest / jungle TBD? Those are the themes in EOTM I suppose. EBG certainly isn’t some kind of three-lobed symmetrical shape, each third of the map has its differences.
I suppose it might still lead to complaints of “oh no our home BL is (whichever one is too boring and flat or too vertical and complex) so I’m totally quitting”, well, then go play on your favourite kind of BL and rack up points on enemy turf, that’s what it’s there for anyhow.
The rest of the 5 apparent priorities I’m pretty good with (a reward track in particular sounds like it’d relieve a long standing complaint of grinding PvE to fund WvW food/gear/guild upgrades), just hoping the “fix / revert” BL thing is approached with a real open mind.
Should also take into account many guilds (read: individuals contributing to their guilds) have already poured an ocean of gold (worth RL$) into disliked, but “well here they are like them or not” systems re: tactivation schematics and auras and things so extreme suggestions like “and while you’re at it, rip out the tactivators as a map fix bc it’ll bring back my guild” should also be approached with care.
“No plans at this time” per Guild Chat re gliding so nevermind!
If PvE can be combed for every sensitive “no fly zone spot” across all its maps, JPs, dungeons etc., how about the same for even just one map like the DBLs? Devs liberally applying “NFZs” to places they see as sensitive / compromising map design, great. The ones that get ignored / forgotten would probably be revealed on the forums within a day or going live anyhow. If as we suspect, the DBLs were first designed with gliding in mind, maybe some amount of thinking has already gone into the topic, I can’t say.
More advanced / brainstormy stuff about AA siege, AA NPCs, AA mechanics of ground players applying ranged pressure to flying players would all be off in the vague future, much like any other changes that the community seems to cry out for (stabo, banner changes, reward tracks, backpiece, you name it…)
+1 to Grimaldi. Also a T2 player, yes I can dodge a big carpet of damage but it’s really ugly out there right now. Die hards holding out for WvW to stay fun and at least fair within reason, are at risk of leaving. New blood may just be peeking into WvW (including legendary hunting people looking for whatever Gift of (Whatever) which requires wvw rank 30), this is kind of the time to make a good first impression, as opposed to steamrolling with criss crossing banners.
I do not know what kind of rebalance (shy of removal) would be worthwhile… narrower / limited AoEs, longer CDs, tweaks of wielder defiance, shorter duration, chance for them to break like a Silverwastes Shovel after a few uses or what, but current iteration is kind of poor.
While I knew that pick / focus can and should go find banner wielders, I’d forgot that denial of a T2+ walled objective to produce more banners was maybe a good idea to deny someone their next banner. Duh. Maybe that’d be a way to express disapproval of weapons of mass destruction.
Having played with and against dragon banners a bit now…I have to respectfully disagree that they are an I-win button. They are powerful, yes, though their main power comes not from the fact that they have high damage skills, but specifically because the skills damage more than 5 people at once. But they are hardly all-powerful, and anyone getting 1-shot by them needs to stop running full zerk ele. The game has changed. You can’t run full glass anymore and be effective. Get over it.
They are very clearly designed to be an anti skill-less blob weapon. Any coordinated group worth their salt is not going to have a problem with them. The counters to them are numerous and are generally found in any skill group. Use your focus party to take down the banner carrier quickly (hint: he’s the only one with a defiance bar, pretty easy to find, and if he’s doing as much damage as you claim then he’ll be pretty squishy too). Dodge out of the dragon banner 5 skill (it moves insanely slow and is impossible to miss). Don’t push through a choke that is covered in AoEs. Wear a little PVT armor for crying out loud.
These are anti-pug weapons. Because they hit more than 5 targets they allow smaller, coordinated groups to take on larger, less coordinated groups. That is a really, really great thing, something this game needs more of badly. Yes of course big groups can use them too, but if they aren’t coordinated the banners lose a ton of their potency. And if you find yourself outnumbered against a big, coordinated group using them…go somewhere else on the map (or another map). You probably wouldn’t have had much luck against that group even if they didn’t have banners.
The problem with dragonbanner isn’t in fights, but when used against small havoc groups trying to put down siege. I doubt very much that Anet ever intended a single defender to have so much power against small groups of attackers.
This. This is the major problem, especially with dragon banner 5. It is a 1-shot easy kill against cata rushes that requires even less skill than a siege-disabler (a pretty low bar to cross). Given that the whole purpose of banners is anti-personnel and not anti-siege, I wouldn’t be opposed to disabling their ability to damage siege.
I liked your post and it’s making me reconsider what one of our commanders was deeming cancer on a “we’re against a group who is running two of these banners” kind of night. Think his instinct was fight cancer with cancer… whether like “kitten it, everyone get out your longbows it’s pirate ship” or others suggesting time to snipe the opposing driver and keep doing so until the banners were put away.
You’re right that a focus team can and should be assigned to look for the defiance bar guy(s), it can’t be that hard to spot. “OK squad 7 you’re my focus team, find that Platinum Scout with the banner and melt him.” Possible in a coordinated group who better have voice comms and at least some subsquads with useful comps and skilled people, harder if typemanding, pugmanding etc. I guess.
I admit I hate seeing that road of fire rectangles though. Open field not as scary, chokes like bridges and hallways, hella scary. Sure I’ve got PVT and will try to withdraw unless immobilized, stunned or whatever, but plenty of well meaning casual dip-toe-in or militia being along and not necessarily on voice comms or having seen the banner in effect are unfortunately about to be rallybots.
WvW already has a hard enough time drawing new blood, mightn’t it kind of suck to say “this is an anti-pug weapon, since it’s on the field now get lost noobs?” Not saying this is going to drive some kind of closed raids culture, but it can’t help the vitality of the game mode.
It is fun in its way (watching it the first couple of times is pretty nice) but it has shortcomings.
- there is a clear audio cue when it initiates, like air raid sirens… time to retreat for the 4ish minutes of bombing.
- I am sure it cycles though I can’t say what spots get hit at what points. I know there’s a point when 3rd floor treb platforms get hot, and the lord’s room gets hot. Makes me wonder if the 2nd floor with the nodes gets hot too (same x-y coordinates but not z). I am sure the outer courtyard looks a mess at a point, but I can’t say if there’s safe spots like by this tree, fountain, hut or what. There may be additional spots in the cycle I’m unaware of, I’ve only ever been on the “giving” end, not “receiving.” I wonder if those on the receiving end get visual cues like red circles all over the place, or is it simply chaos of maybe you’re all of a sudden getting blown up?
- due to the cooldown, a feint can draw a lever pull, which means something like a 15 minute safe period after all the fireworks end. Alternately you might notice a competitor tried to invade and got in trouble (maybe you heard the air raid siren?), so your team is well positioned to jump in right after and capitalize on the wall breach the fail-team just made, or broken gates or whatever.
- noobs, trolls or spies might pull the lever too if on public tactivation. Look at the clock and plan best use of the cooldown safe period as above, I guess.